Arts & Humanities Research Student Seminars

The Arts & Humanities Research Student seminars provide a platform for research students in the Languages and Cultures and History areas of SSEES to present their research in an informal setting.

Each 20-30 minute research presentation is followed by a Q&A session, which allows presenters to gain feedback from their colleagues and faculty working across the SSEES region and coming from a range of disciplinary backgrounds.

The seminar is customarily followed by more informal discussion over a glass of wine and is open to all to attend. ​

8 October 2014, UCL SSEES Room 433

This talk will outline the problems of identifying relevant cultural contexts in which historical actors negotiated their perceptions of each other's capacity to act. The paper will argue that the tension between nationalism and restricted suffrage peculiar to establishment discourse in nineteenth-century Romania provide a case-study with a broader relevance for the given period.

Chronology, Narrative, and Founding Acts: Between a Transcendental Rock and a Decisionist Hard Place - Jack Reilly

15 October 2014, UCL SSEES Room 433

This presentation looks at the concept of a 'quasi-transcendental' act in Ernesto Laclau and Jacques Derrida. The paper will claim that their respective explorations of emancipatory politics can outflank charges of decisionism as well as avoid straightforward transcendentalism.

22 October 2014, UCL SSEES Room 433

Lyric poetry derives its name from the lyre that the Greek god Hermes fashioned from a tortoise shell. The talk is about the appearance of this allegorical object in the two texts of its title. In both cases, the shell is an important accessory in the presentation of the author's 'lyric I.'

12 November 2014, UCL SSEES Room 433

In the 1960s with the rise of film production in the Soviet republics, the question of ‘national’ cinematic style became prominent in both critical press and professional discussions. Through exploring the poetics and politics of the so-called ‘poetic documentary’ movement in the republics of Latvia and Kirghizia, this paper will argue that the terms of the debates about the ‘national’ style are central for our understanding of cinema’s function in the balance of power among national republics within the Soviet Union.

The Veil Lifting Campaign in Yugoslavia - Ivan Simic

3 December 2014, UCL SSEES Room 433

This seminar will explore the consequences of imposing the category of “backwardness” on Muslim women in Yugoslavia, arguing that it provided the communist government and its activists with the tools for radical interventions into Muslim women’s lives, culminating with the veil lifting campaign. The seminar will tackle the positioning of the Muslim community leadership who supported new measures, the fervent attempts of the activists to “modernize” and unveil the Muslim women, and ultimately the severe punishments imposed by the legislators.

10 December 2014, UCL SSEES Room 433

The purpose of this talk is to look at the evolution of ideas about language, in particular, how superiority and correctness came to be associated with certain language varieties (known as standards) in European linguistic thought, and how such ideas were later imported to Central and Easter Europe. The anxiety surrounding an idealized, multi-purpose language variety (often called good language in popular usage) is contrasted with the equally anxious, although less obvious, quest for linguistic anchorage. Evidence from Hungarian, Romance, Greek, and Slavonic languages will be discussed, with special regard to the historically evolving status of languages and language varieties.​